If possible save both. If eeryone donated or did some work to help it would help massively. There are plenty of projects going on but more people need to be involved more. So basically we could save both.

This is like choosing between apple crumble OR custard !!!! not a choice to be made lightly. No of course both have to be saved. Now if the question was "Palm oil shampoo or jungle?" . . . "Air conditioning or Ice caps?" . . . "Bananas or polar bears?" . . . wouldn't the world be so much simpler. Its about time some serious decisions are made and they are going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people.

At the time that I am writing this, there are ten replies to this question. A quick analysis of the replies illustrates the fundamental problem of trying to get society to do anything about our destruction of the natural world. Only one out of the nine answers the question, the others talk about something else to do with their personal opinion about the world. We all know we want to save them all but that's not the problem, the problem is getting people to get on and make choices.

Conservation projects which focus on protecting habitats and educating local people about living sustainably with wildlife will support a multitude of species: gorillas and monkeys could be protected simultaneously. Suggesting an 'either/or' approach to conserving wildlife reminds me of Chris Packham's recent comment about letting giant pandas die out.

Funding and resources in conservation are insufficient and organisations do have to prioritise their efforts. With gorillas, the primary threat to their future survival is forest clearance and degradation, where human populations are competing for land resource. There are also issues around poaching, disease, illegal mining and civil war. With monkeys, habitat loss and degradation is similarly a major threat to survival, alongside problems such as the bushmeat trade. As with most wildlife conservation situations, a dual approach of protecting existing habitat/wildlife populations alongside working with local people to develop ways of living sustainably with the natural environment would seem to be the best option.

Who are we to judge? "Survival of the fittest" says we should choose the ape over the monkey as they are more closely related to us. Therefore the ape is a better species for us to experiment on for vaccines against disease for our own survival

If you answered this question based alone on which species needed our help more as it is more endangered than the other, the answer would be Mountain Gorillas. However, this is an unfair answer as you are looking at one particular type of Gorilla, whereas with monkeys, you are looking at a whole range of sub-species (monkeys being a general term for many different types).

However, answering this question on a moral basis would come down to which animal you prefer. If conservationists did this,how many fewer animals would we have now? For example, in New zealand, should conservationists be focusing all their combined efforts on saving the kiwi, or should they also be spreading their sparse funds and people to save the less favoured Weta? This question shows that you need a vast range of people who are willing to save both (or however many other animals) in any scenario. It's not: which animal should we save? It's: how should we save both of these animals?

This is my first post on these forums, and I just wanted to comment on the question of how we ascribe 'worth' to one species over another. Is the mountain gorilla or the hump backed whale more deserving of being protected than say an uninspiring species of little grey moth in a rain forest that almost nobody has ever seen? When the moth is gone, it is gone for ever, just like the gorilla or whale, but does anybody, except perhaps a scientist studying the moth, really care THAT much? As much as about a mammalian species that we can relate to more? Does anybody care emotionally about some minute, deep sea prawn that might exhibit some extraordinary and unique behaviour that is seen nowhere else in the animal kingdom?

All species which exist have spent the same amount of time evolving uniquely to live in their own particular environment, They have adapted and re-adapted countless times as those environments changed, until they are as we see them now, in this moment in time, a snapshot of this stage in their evolution. Complex or simple, unique or diverse, whatever its particular tactic for survival, each species is EXACTLY as it needs to be to exploit the environment it evolved for. People talk about 'successful' species, generally referring to its being widespread or having an ability to adapt to multiple habitats, but that's not the only form of success, and if a creature is living and reproducing, it is, ergo, successful. Every creature is equally fit, in the Darwinian sense, to survive in its particular habitat, otherwise it simply wouldn't exist.

That is, of course, until that habitat changes. And environments do change, (usually quite naturally, without intervention by man or other large animal population), and some species which find themselves unable to adapt quickly enough, die out, while others survive. It would be wonderful if no species ever went extinct, but if they didn't there would be no new niches available for new species to evolve to fill. There would be no evolution. There would be no 'higher' forms of life, and no humans to regret the passing of beautiful creatures, or to try to preserve the lives of the ones they like best.

My view? That despite our instinctive, (and very human), emotional reaction to warm blooded, furry animals that remind us of ourselves, all life forms are equally valid and important, (except perhaps in the sense that some species may be more vital to the life cycles of others). The scientist in me protests that it is anthropomorphic and artificial to care more about the cuddly animals from our nursery picture books, than about the less appealing, slimy ones, or those with too many legs. But, I also acknowledge that that is a very human thing to do so, and if we weren't the human beings that we are, we wouldn't care about preserving any animal life, except perhaps instinctively as a food resource. Chimpanzees, for instance, regularly hunt and kill monkeys for food, and clearly have no such qualms about eating their near(ish) relatives. African elephants uproot trees to feed on the leaves, and can cause serious damage to their environments. So, although to destroy is clearly not only a human trait, to care about that destruction does seem to be, (albeit perhaps a fairly recent one), so I shouldn't knock it.

The bottom line: Some of the beautiful life forms we care about are GOING to become extinct, despite our best efforts to preserve them, along with millions of others we don't know about, (flies, beetles, tiny fish), and may care about even less. But we have to keep doing what we do, anthropomorphic and unscientific though our reasons may sometimes be, because that's the only way any of it is going to work.

To be honest it depends which type of monkey of gorilla you are talking about, obviously the most endangered would definetly be at the top of the list but both are equal, instead of saving on of the two save both and make the world a better place

statistically i think that gorillas need more saving because there are less species and theyre all very endangered whereas there are loads of species of monkey an all arent endangered.But still save them all